Tits, Ass, and Real Estate

by Eve Gilbert, Robert Crumb (Introduction)

Populated by junkies, grifters, hustlers, strippers, pimps, and various strains of victims and criminals, this is a biting,satiric portrait of America from the lower depths. If you put Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, and Kathy Acker in a blender and added the ratty, unadorned drawing style of of Charles Rodriguez, you'd have some idea of how hot and incendiary a brew this is.

A collection of autobiographical stories, Eve Gilbert allows readers full access to her unglamorous world, filled with people most of us hope we never have to meet. "The Real Resume" is a depressingly realistic tour of the various wage-slave jobs Gilbert has held over the years. Another highlight is "Pregnate?"--which was written in San Fransisco porn store while Gilbert was waiting for an interview-- in which Gilbert relates to how she ended up pregnant despite a safety net of latex, with no money for even a pregnancy test, let alone an abortion. Unflinchingly, candid and caustic, Gilbert has one of the most uniquely confident and iconoclastic voices to hit the world of graphic novels in several years.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this for 1p from my Amazon wishlist. I heard about it when I went through Fantagraphics website and basically added all comics written or drawn by women when I realised how I was only reading male authors and wanted a change. This collection is simply one of the most amazing things I've ever read. Half way through I posted to facebook about how I've never read better comics about crack whores and it's true. This book is totally beat. Travelling across America, hanging out with junkies, ex-cons, prostitutes, but not in a strange or glamourising way, but rather done in a very real way. It was very underground and very much like pho bang comic book style. I wish Eve would write and draw more as everything here was incredible. Mental health, drug addiction, abusive relationships, were all covered in a very surreal and yet honest way. The art was great, it was not a realistic style at all. It's hard to explain but it just suited the subject matter so well and perfectly conveyed what was going on and so much of the futility and depression, while still maintaining a degree of humour and irony. This was easily the best graphic novel I've read all year.

[r. fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5

Unreal. Raw and pissed off and punk as fuck. Huge inspiration for me as a cartoonist. Can't wait to read these comix again and again and again

[Derek Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and truly painful. You won't see this kind of graphic art in many places, and Gilbert was slammed for her "non-artistic" drawing early on. But every skewed aspect is perfectly placed.

it tells the tale of an underground, wretched life that doesn't hold back on any level. She is beyond honest in her verbal and graphic depiction of herself, seen graphically in some episodes as a rat-headed degenerate, in others as a largely willing victim of anything the world could throw at her.

But go to the back of the book, in the interview and comments section (with photo), and you find that she's a beautiful, innocent-looking escapee from reality. What to make of that? It doesn't matter, really. This is a work of intense, stunning honesty.

[Becca Becca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this while on vacation in Hawaii. Helped balance out all the annoying touristy weirdness of Hawaii.

[Antigonal · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy piece of an underrated work. Perfect images from a perfect stories from a fucked up world.